Aroma Fresh to launch innovative food products chain

Trivandrum: Aroma Horticulture Products, a subsidiary of Aroma Group of Companies that has operations in India and the Middle East, is launching an innovative food products chain in Kerala under the brand name ‘Aroma Fresh’.

The first outlet of Aroma Fresh will be inaugurated at Sasthamangalam in Thiruvananthapuram on July 24. Aroma Fresh outlets will sell fresh fruits and vegetables grown using pesticide-free, eco-friendly precision farming techniques at the company’s own polyhouses and sourced from organic certified farms and growers across Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

The company has tied up with the Kerala Agricultural University to carry out pesticide residue content analysis on the products to ensure they are free of harmful chemicals.

“Our goal is to provide safe and healthy food products to consumers at affordable prices,” said Sajeev P K, Chairman & CEO of Aroma Fresh at a press briefing here. “We have linkages for production and value addition with different groups – ranging from the tribal community, farmers groups, women’s self help groups and corporate plantation groups. We consider this project a social responsibility component of the operations of Aroma Group of Companies.”

Aroma Fresh plans to open two more outlets in Trivandrum in the next two months and plans to further add one outlet to the chain every three months.

Aroma Horticulture is a pioneer in large-scale precision farming in Kerala. Precision farming is a break-through system that uses technology to provide crops the exact amount of inputs such as nutrients or water at the right phase of their growth for optimum yields.

Aroma Fresh has 18 polyhouses of its own – 10 in Kollam and eight in Thiruvananthapuram. It also has linkages with farmers who do polyhouse farming, providing them technology support and protocols for production. It offers a buy back mechanism with a premium for the zero pesticides production to farmer groups in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Aroma Fresh has devised an Internal Quality management system that is implemented in the farms by development organizations and NGOs. Aroma Fresh production units are GlobalGAP certified, a prominent globally accepted certification mark for Good Agriculture Practice and sustainable agriculture.